Bilawal sets tone for PPP campaign

Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari pledged on Monday to complete the process of provincial autonomy if the people voted his party to the government at the Centre in the next general elections.
Bilawal, who is on a campaign trail, addressed his supporters in Sukkur.

He said there were some federal ministries which had become redundant after the 18th Constitutional Amendment. But still, he added, not only these ministries existed but eating away Rs100 billion from the federal budget.

Bilawal pledged to conclude the process of provincial autonomy, if voted to power. He blamed the bureaucracy for impeding the provincial autonomy and wasting public money and resources by stalling the federal transfers to the provinces.

“I think the journey of devolution hasn’t completed as yet,” the PPP chief told the crowds. “I promise you [the people] that if you give the federal government to the PPP, we will complete the remaining work of the provincial autonomy,” he added.

According to him, there were some ministries which existed at the federal level, even though their functions had been devolved to the provinces after the 18 Amendment.

However, he did not specify the names of those ministries. Those ministries, Bilawal said, were eating away around Rs100 billion from the federal budget at a time when the Centre had become economically broken. He added a PPP government would return these departments to the provinces.

In this way, he continued, Rs100 billion would be saved from the federal funds which would be spent on education and welfare projects. He told the supporters that his stated commitment must not be taken as hollow slogan, which was the hallmark of the ilk of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) chief Imran Khan.

He recalled that the health system was devolved very slowly by 2015 yet it continued to face obstacles due to litigation. “The courts tried to stop it [devolution of the health sector] but we managed to take the health [sector] from the Centre.”

In further criticism of the government functionaries, the PPP chairman said that whenever the time for sacrifice came, the federal bureaucracy passed on the entire burden to the ordinary people. However, he added that his party’s government would not allow this.

“They [bureaucrats] always say that we are passing through some hard times or that we are at some sensitive crossroads because of which the people will have to give sacrifices,” he said, adding that he would make the elite and mafias, who only enjoyed subsidies, relief and tax amnesty, to share burden.

“The general elections are round the corner,” the PPP chief declared, sounding certain that the polling would take place regardless of some quarters, including his father, former president Asif Zardari, who wanted a delayed vote.
Bilawal had said last week that election should be held within the constitutional timeframe of 90 days.
If not in 90 days, he added, then in 120 days. However, Zardari issued a statement the next day that election should be held after fresh delimitation of the constituencies in the wake of the new census.

While talking to the media in Badin on September 9, the PPP chairman said that he only listened to his father over the matters related to their home, but on the party issues, he added, the PPP Central Executive Committee and the workers’ opinion reigned supreme.

In Sukkur, in an apparent move to discredit any talk of disagreement between him and Zardari, the PPP chief credited the former president for giving the gifts of the 18th Amendment, the National Finance Commission (NFC) Award and provincial autonomy to the country.

Bilawal dedicated most part of his speech to motivate his supporters to kick-start the election campaign by making it a challenge to win support of the people of Punjab and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P). “We will have to make this party win not only in Sindh, Balochistan and K-P but also in Punjab.”

He asked them to tell the people that for 70 years they had been seeing the same faces but now someone else in the form of a young leader should be given a chance. According to him, Pakistan’s 70% population consisted of youth, whose support should be elicited in the next elections.

He maintained that unlike any other political party, the PPP represented the common man – labours and peasants. Bilawal referred to the National Institute of Cardiovascular Diseases (NICVD) and said the services of the PPP government in Sindh were unmatched in the health sector.

“There is neither a hospital in Lahore nor in Islamabad which can match even the NICVD Sukkur,” he said. The NICVD’s branch hospitals in many cities of the provinces have been established not for the rich but for the common man to provide them free medical treatment, he added.